ABJECT FAILURE OF AFGHAN GOVT TO PROTECT AFGHAN FEMALES: THE BATTLE IN THE WOLESI JIRGA CIRCA 2013

The "conservatives" (read: Muslim misogynists) in the Afghan parliament succeeded in shelving much needed legislation that --at least on the books-- would serve as a first and essential step towards addressing the pervasive culturally/socially sanctioned violence against the female populace in the name of Islam.

The Law on the Elimination of Violence Against Women, also known as EVAW, which had the approval of President Karzai was withdrawn from debate/passage in Afghanistan's Wolesi Jirga (House of the people).

Opponents to the bill --which would legislatively embed essential protections for Afghan females against being bought and sold, married off as children and ensure certain protections from rampant domestic violence (at least legally)-- trotted out "Islamic Shariah" to bolster their opposition to institutional protections for females.

What is sobering is the fact that certain female members of the parliament joined forces with the mullah/Islamist/"conservatives" to oppose measures that would protect their own sisters/daughters/mothers etc.

Sick and tired of the "un-Islamic" mantra being bandied about to silence opponents of Shariah. How can these "Shariah" proponents justify continued horrors as permissible according to Islamic jurisprudence like the recent news on the brutal/horrific marital rape and murder of an 8 year old by her 50 year old husband (who was also a village mullah) on her wedding night or the stoning to death for alleged infidelity in some village in Kunduz? What kind of "religion" ("of peace") is one talking about??? Are there sane people left in the Muslim dominated regions willing and able to speak out against such brutalities or is the rabies spreading fast?   

The horrific violence against children, females (being burnt alive, acid thrown, noses cut off) and tolerant (read: secularists/religious minorities) citizens in the name of Islam aka the religion of peace is rampant in the Muslim world.

Where is the outrage in these Muslim societies and the equally brutal countermeasures against beasts who understand /appreciate no other language/methods/measures?

To Karzai's credit, he managed to circumvent the "conservative" legislators by passing a presidential decree (the Law on the Elimination of Violence Against Women) in 2009 which criminalized child marriage, forced prostitution, rape, forced self-immolation and any other violent behavior which specifically targeted females. But he has no traction (or does he??) with the "conservative" elements in Parliament to ensure this becomes law.


Brave activists like Fawzia Koofi, head of the women's affairs committee of the upper house of parliament, the Wolesi Jirga, and a strong supporter of EVAW met their match in the thuggish opposition disguised as "pious religious entities" who sought to ensure compliance with Shariah: namely the mullahs and warlords who managed to wrestle their way into the parliament a long time ago.

With the NATO withdrawal looming, proponents of such measures have good reason to worry. What is tragic is that after billions of dollars spent to win "hearts and minds" and help the Afghan populace counter the terrorists (read: Muslim extremists), what a NATO "victory" will look like in due course will be hard for most Westerners to fathom.

The window of opportunity closed a long time ago because of a myriad of factors and missed breaks at the very beginning.

Alas, the writing is on the wall. There is only one way to deal with this growing scourge and it is not a palatable one for most civilized people. Yet.

http://www.thefrontierpost.com/article/13707/

http://www.tolonews.com/en/afghanistan/10536-law-on-elimination-of-violence-against-women-dropped-by-parliament

http://kabulpress.org/my/spip.php?article88802

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON'S SAGE ADVICE/CASE FOR NON-INTERVENTION IN THE VIOLENT SYRIAN QUAGMIRE IN PJ MEDIA

Count Me Out on Syria

Posted By Victor Davis Hanson On May 13, 2013 @ 9:44 am  

Some excerpts from Hanson’s excellent analysis of the current violent Syrian quagmire. For the entire article, here’s the link

http://pjmedia.com/victordavishanson/count-me-out-on-syria/?print=1

There are good reasons to go into Syria, but far better ones to stay out.

Let us review a few of them. Syria is a humanitarian crisis with over one million refugees and 70,000 dead.

But there are similar outrages in Mali, Somalia, and the Sudan. Why no calls to go there as well? Would U.S. troops, planes, or massive shipments of weapons stop the killing, or simply ensure endless cycles of death following the Assad departure? 

Will Syria’s Christians and other minorities become worse off with or without Assad?

More importantly, we do not at this late stage know which terrorist is a pro-Western Google-type, and which is a hard-core jihadist. 

The history of the Middle East in particular (see Iran in 1980) and world history in general (cf. France, 1794 or Russia, 1917) suggests that the more extreme, better organized revolutionary zealots, even when in the minority, usually win out over the moderate and sensible reformers in the post-war sorting out and sizing up. 

There are not many Washingtons, Jeffersons, or Madisons in the annals of revolutionary history.

When Assad goes, the postbellum mess will either go straight to the sham election of a Mohammed Morsi type, who will try to suspend the very constitution that brought him to power, or we will witness round two of Libyan-type violence. 

Of course, there are also strategic reasons for toppling Assad. How wonderful to see Hezbollah lose their Iranian-arms conduit, or to remove Syria from the Iran-Hezbollah axis. But is that not happening now anyway?

Well apart from Benghazi, Susan Rice and Samantha Power’s Libya is a blueprint for nothing. 

This time around we will not get UN approval after assuring Russia and China last time that our “humanitarian aid” and “no-fly zones” did not entail ground support, which of course it immediately did. 

If in 2002 Iraq was to be a “cakewalk,” by 2004 it was “Bush’s war.” To name just a few across the political spectrum in random order, I’m sure that a Francis Fukuyama, Fareed Zakaria, Andrew Sullivan, George Will, the late William F. Buckley, Jr., Thomas Friedman, John Kerry, and thousands of others all had legitimate reasons in abandoning the cause of Iraq. 

Lord knows it was unwise to let thousands of scattered Ba’athist soldiers roam the streets of Iraq unemployed. How stupid was it to focus only on WMD when the Congress gave lots of reasons to remove Saddam? 

The list of screw-ups goes on and on. But the fact remains that victory in war goes not to those who make no mistakes, but to those who learn the most quickly from them in order to ensure the fewest in the future.

Please, Spare Us Now “You Owe Us Help”

If Arab reformers ever wanted a shot at democracy, Iraq was still their golden opportunity. Instead, almost all damned the effort and caricatured Americans. I once in 2006 sat in a clinic in Tripoli listening to Arab intellectuals (or rather Gaddafi minders) explain to me the Jewish roots of the Iraqi war, and how Americans were siphoning oil off in the desert and flying it in tankers home. 

Finally, I could not even follow all the conspiracy theories concocted to explain how wicked the Maliki government was.

Please, spare us now “you owe us your help.” 

We have been there, done that, and we have learned some great lessons about the 21st century, pre-modern Middle East, and any interventions into it: a) Arab reformers damn the U.S. for doing nothing, but they will damn it far more for doing something; b) interventionists believe that all success is their offspring, and failure is outsourced to someone else, usually the military or those who sent the military in; c) the Middle East lesson of Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya is that only a huge U.S. ground presence, in the fashion of postwar Italy, Germany, or Japan, coupled with abject defeat of the enemy, can lead to any chance of consensual government.

Without bloody fighting and without massive U.S. aid either the enemy wins and takes over, or what replaces the enemy reverts to the mindset of the enemy.

There is irony in seeing the opportunistic war critic Barack Obama out-drone Bush or be attacked on his Left by liberals, who rail at his callousness in not intervening in Syria. 

But there is not enough irony for schadenfreude — given that American soldiers might be sent into a theater by those who would support them only to the degree that they were deemed successful and blame their setbacks on everyone but themselves.

A nearly bankrupt and divided America after Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya is not up for Syria — and an Arab Spring that on its own chose Winter does not deserve any more American blood.

Sorry, that’s just the way it is.

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Article printed from Works and Days: http://pjmedia.com/victordavishanson

URL to article: http://pjmedia.com/victordavishanson/count-me-out-on-syria/